Fate

Welcome back to our weekly look at tabletop roleplaying game, and accessories, crowdfunding roundup! This week we look into the dawn of the British Roleplaying hobby and the two men who shaped generations, a collection of dark Pathfinder adventures, a 5th Edition module, a FATE game of cataclysmic war and some beautiful gaming tiles. If you have anything you’d like us to cover, or questions about anything we talk about, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or contact me directly.

Welcome back to our weekly look at tabletop roleplaying game, and accessories, crowdfunding roundup! Each week we’ll be looking at a few campaigns currently running that have caught our eye as well as occasionally speaking to some of the creators about their campaigns, or looking at some of the ‘behind the scenes’ business aspects of putting together, launching, operating and then delivering a crowdfunded project. If you have anything you’d like us to cover, or questions about anything we talk about, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or contact me directly.

A rundown of the New Releases that should be hitting games stores this coming week! Board games, card games, RPGs, Wargames, Miniatures and collectible games... hopefully something for everyone! In addition to the games hitting your local store we’re also now listing a few RPG PDF releases from the last week that we hope may be of interest. For more information about any of the physical products please contact your local games store.

A rundown of the New Releases that should be hitting games stores this coming week! Board games, card games, RPGs, Wargames, Miniatures and collectible games... hopefully something for everyone! In addition to the games hitting your local store we’re also now listing a few RPG PDF releases from the last week that we hope may be of interest. For more information about any of the physical products please contact your local games store.

Every day of the year on this planet has its share of death and tragedy, but I think most can agree there's been a rather intense and poignant spate of reminders lately of just how dark and painful things can be. To that end, I wanted to shine the spotlight on gaming things that celebrate healers, diplomats, and adventuring that celebrates other means of conflict resolution. I am pretty thrilled at how many beautiful and uplifting things I found. (PS - I rearranged the order from the actual week's chronology due to the small image Evil Hat used for Do.)

The Fate Adversary Toolkit, the latest in the Toolkit line of supplements for Fate Core from Evil Hat Productions, opens up some interesting new avenues for your Fate games. Written by Ed Turner and Brian Engard, one of the architects of the Fate Core rules, this supplement widens the scope of the adversaries that characters can face in Fate Core games. Building off of the idea of the Fate Fractal and expanding the idea of adversaries beyond being a character or a creature that you can get into a conflict with during a game session, the Fate Adversary Toolkit brings some smart new ideas to the gaming table.

Last year, Sasquatch Game Studio announced that it had acquired the trademark for TSR's old Alternity science-fiction game. At the time, it was mentioned that they did not have the Star*Drive, Dark*Matter, Gamma World, StarCraft Adventures, or Star Frontiers, properties owned by WotC. This may be changing, though - because Evil Hat Productions has applied for the trademark to Star Frontiers.

A rundown of the New Releases that should be hitting games stores this coming week! Board games, card games, RPGs, Wargames, Miniatures and collectible games... hopefully something for everyone! In addition to the games hitting your local store we’re also now listing a few RPG PDF releases from the last week that we hope may be of interest. For more information about any of the physical products please contact your local games store.

Welcome back to our weekly look at tabletop roleplaying game, and accessories, crowdfunding roundup! Hang on... it can't already be a week since my last column? I know right! You're getting a bonus column out of me because of the amount of the campaigns out there being crowdfunded at present! Yesterdays column looked at a bunch of Pathfinder and 5th Edition books available and today we're looking at some other campaigns... as well as a couple of Pathfinder/5E ones.

Kickstarter have launched a Project Of Earth initiative to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Voyager probes. Shades of Vengeance have taken the idea of what might happen when a probe is picked up by an alien civilization. What’s their reaction and how do they respond. The bad news for us is it looks like they invade in Shades of Vengeance’s Era: Balam. The good news is that Shades of Vengeance are not only releasing Era: Balam in their signature Era d10 system but also for FATE and Savage Worlds.

One of the things that eternally plagues game masters is the subject of game prep. How do we find that balance between having more material than we will ever need, and having a session come to a stop because there wasn't enough prep done? This is something, I think that most game masters deal with regardless of how long of a time they have been sitting in the game master's chair. Really, as long as a game entertains everyone at the table, you've done the right amount of prep. However, the question will always remain.

A rundown of the New Releases that should be hitting games stores this coming week! Board games, card games, RPGs, Wargames, Miniatures and collectible games... hopefully something for everyone! For more information about any of the products please contact your local games store.

It shouldn't be much of a shock to people that I am more of a fan of science fiction than fantasy. And probably because of the fact that my tastes have always been more defined by my reading comics than the classics of the genre, I don't sweat about the science in my science fiction. Laser swords. Explosions in space. Kidnapped space royalty. Robots. Space battles. I can't get enough of that stuff. My ideals for science fiction tend towards Metal Hurlant (I like the original French name of the magazine better because it causes less confusion with the music genre), The Incal, Valerian and Laureline and Judge Dredd than Asimov and Clarke. In this vein, I decided to talk about the Bulldogs! science fiction role-playing game from Galileo Games, and using the Fate Core rules, today.

Fresh from securing a Savage Worlds license from Pinnacle Entertainment FeralGames have lost no time in launching their first Savage Worlds based Kickstarter with Ghost Ops. In Ghost Ops you are part of an Elite Special Forces Unit sent on missions to deal with Drug Cartels, Crime Lords, terrorist Cells and Warlords… from jungles to deserts, artic regions to urban sprawls. Fans of Tom Clancy and computer games such as Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell should enjoy this.

I'm going to stick with Theme Weeks for a while and see how that goes. As always, I'd appreciate you letting me know if you like the idea or not. If you do like it, then please feel free to suggest themes for the future! This week (which I rather imagine, like others, will recur more than once) is all about Magic, the Arcane, and how that plays into your game. Sure, there has to be a D&D-related Pick in there, but I think you'll find a pretty interesting mix of stuff across many fields here.

A rundown of the New Releases that should be hitting games stores this coming week! Board games, card games, RPGs, Wargames, Miniatures and collectible games... hopefully something for everyone! For more information about any of the products please contact your local games store.

I'm baaaack! Yeah, sorry for the absence, friends, but things got a bit messy and sad for me for a bit, and I frankly let this just slip right off my desk. I am back in the saddle, and I've returned with a Theme Week - Eclectic Fun! Check out this odd array of gaming goodness that spans a rather different spectrum than usual.

This week, I confronted my complicated relationship with FATE* (as well as my even more complicated relationship with grimdark and horror gaming**), which led to some really interesting discussions. Not a lot of grimdark among this week's Picks, but there's two FATE games, both of which I'd love to try as part of my exploration of this very popular game system. There's also the latest in the 7th Sea revival, a wizarding school setting for 5e fans, and our illustrious Russ Morrissey's O.L.D. entry in the WOIN revolution.

While the show Tabletop normally focuses on boardgames, it occasionally dips into tabletop roleplaying games. A couple of years ago, Will Wheaton and his friends played Green Ronin's Dragon AGE; and now they've turned their attention to Evil Hat's Fate Core. This episode of Tabletop features Felicia Day, screenwriter John Rogers, Will Wheaton, and GM (and co-designer of Fate) Ryan Macklin. Wheaton describes Fate as the gold standard of games which let the rules get out of the way so as to focus on the story.

Welcome back to our weekly look at tabletop roleplaying game, and accessories, crowdfunding roundup! Each week we’ll be looking at a few campaigns currently running that have caught our eye as well as occasionally speaking to some of the creators about their campaigns, or looking at some of the ‘behind the scenes’ business aspects of putting together, launching, operating and then delivering a crowdfunded project. If you have anything you’d like us to cover, or questions about anything we talk about, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or contact me directly.

Recently I picked up the print on demand version of The Primal Order by Wizards of the Coast founder Peter Adkison. I have the original edition of the book, I managed to grab a copy of it back in the day, and I have the other published books for the unfortunately uncompleted game line. The idea behind The Primal Order was to build what they called a "capsystem" that would work as an overlay to other game systems, expanding them into new directions. The Primal Order line dealt with gods and clerics, an important part of many fantasy role-playing games.

One of the first rules they teach you in those pesky freshman-year composition courses is "know your audience." Before you sit down to write a text, consider who's going to be reading it and plan accordingly. When it comes to tabletop role-playing games, I've always considered the game master to be the primary audience of published adventures. Game masters are far more likely than players to read the text of an adventure, so why wouldn't a designer write with the game master in mind?

A lot has been made recently about specific games for gaming with your children. A lot of products in the last five years have focused on this with a wide variety options and feels from Hero Kids, Little Heroes and the upcoming Last Unicorn RPG from Playground Adventures. With that I thought I'd provide a review of a game I used for a long time to get kids into gaming – Steve Jackson Games's Toon.

Welcome back folks, it’s time for the PAIZO NEWS ROUNDUP, your one-stop spot for all the new and interesting material coming from your favorite ever-giving golem. In this go-round, we’ll pick up some new toys that got left out of the earlier look at Ultimate Wilderness, and also introduce a brand new Player Companion. Let’s get started!